I thought you were going to talk about rebasing between different OStree branches without reinstalling. Would have been more interesting than this, and a feature many people overlook of Fedoras atomic distros
I’m currently working on rebuilding a Debian web server that’s been around for 10 years and accrued configuration over that time in NixOS. It’s nice to have one single easy to understand file that fully defines the server and can be used to rebuild it if needed.
I can see that from a server maintenance point of view. After having read so many great things about NixOS, I may have exaggerated my expectation and I may be the problem for being a user with too limited needs to get the full benefits of NixOS.
For me this single config file doesn’t save that much additional files and most of them would be files you configure only once during installation. Nonetheless I can see how “easier” it would be to save one file instead of 3 to reproduce your system and I can only imagine how much better it is from a server point of view.
You might be selling it a bit short. I am not a Nix user, but like you I’ve played around in a vm. The value proposition I see for “normal” users is when you end up tuning and configuring your system just the way you want it (everyone knows what I’m talking about–it happens over months or even years). In nix, you have to do those changes in the config so you can literally take that one file, plop it somewhere else and it’s your computer.
Likewise, I’ve been on this install of Pop for years and for several upgrade cycles. The amount of cruft; things I’ve installed and don’t use, config changes I made while following a tutorial then forgot about, manual tweaks for things that have been officially patched, etc. it would all be in a nix config for me to just… remove.
So I see that as the benefits of it.
That said, it definitely gives me vim vibes. Where the learning curve is pretty steep but once you master it, it’s close to tech Nirvana. Again, since I don’t use it I can’t say that for sure. Maybe one day I’ll have enough time to devote to it to really dive in. Right now, it’s frustrating to use because everything is harder and there aren’t many guides on how to do basic things like get dash-to-dock plugin working on popshell. Or even install and configure neovim. Ain’t nobody got time for that right now.
Great feedback, thanks! I’ve appreciated being able to replicate my system in NixOS within only few hours. I found NixOS actually pretty easy to take a grasp on, though I still didn’t look at flakes in detail. You spot on the reason why I’m using Arch and a bunch of applications you can tweak to perfectly meet your own specific needs (neovim, neomutt, bspwm, rofi…).
I love spending time to config them and to learn new things. This is basically why I’m interested in NixOS as well. Being entirely satisfied with Arch and not being a distro hopper, the fact that I installed NixOS means a lot to me but now I need tangible reasons to fully move to it. Maybe time will help me in my decision.
All the great feedback in response to this post so far confirm how great NixOS is and I had no doubt about that. I may realize what it can bring me after some weeks of serious use. Thanks again for the time spent to write your feedback, very much appreciated
I made a home inventory management software, because I don’t have much space in my flat, so I track every single piece of the compressed pile of boxes; with qr codes on them.
It’s a very simple app but you should have a printer to print qr codes for the boxes.
The documentation lacks some detail, so ask anything about it, if you want to try it.
Or maybe I’m already too old for so much tech. But thanks for letting me think that I’m still a young boy ^^ Not helping with my question but pretty self satisfactory.
I have an old mini PC that I’m going to use with proxmox to share some of the load from my nas. Today I setup tailscale and for it working with unbound DNS so I can use my domain when connected.
Using Ubuntu as a daily driver, due to a class requiring some kind of Linux software (options were WSL, which gave me a weird error, VM, or full install).
Never have I tried to actually use desktop Linux as my primary work computer for more than a couple days.
step 4 didn’t happen. AKA it works now. I have a guess as of why a random app wouldn’t be running. And it makes sense that closing would clear it, as screenshotting opens a fullscreen app. But I don’t get it, how can closing an application delete my clipboard?
What is good about NixOS (and GuixOS) is that they apply to package management the same principles that Git applies to managing source code. The Nix store is basically an append-only database (you might even call it a “blockchain”) of inter-dependent packages.
So from an individual computer user’s point of view, it is much safer to install and roll-back software with Nix than with an ordinary package manager that might allow you to accidentally delete package dependencies and break your system. With Nix, you can install packages that actually do break your system, but because of the append-only nature, you can actually roll-back the install automatically right from the Grub boot menu, no need to re-install anything.
Another advantage of NixOS, though this is more from a system operator’s point of view, is that you can guarantee reproducible builds. If the package you have installed has the same hash on all of your computers, that is a simple, human-verifiable proof that all of those systems are running the exact same build of the software. You can probably see that this is very useful for people running servers, like compute clusters, or doing things like A-B testing.
for me personally I like to be able to install software temporarily using nix-shell command it’s awesome. the installed program will be gone once you leave the nix-shell. It’s just awesome for me.
I’m on mobile so formatting might not look the best, but here it goes!
X11 scaling - does this link help? wiki.archlinux.org/title/HiDPISpecifically under either xorg or KDE plasma I think you might be able to find some settings that help
For Wayland - would wdisplays help you out? I’ve had good results using that along with kanshi.
As for system freezing, I’m just taking a shot in the dark but this might be a KDE thing based on a quick search. Wayland is new and sexy, but apparently all the bugs aren’t worked out for KDE. This answer isn’t great, and is very hand-wavey, but without more details outside of you’re on KDE I can’t really help much. Unfortunately for you, I switched over to Sway which apparently has better Wayland support out of the box.
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